Invisible Hits: The Miracle of The B52's, Live in the Early Days

Close to four decades after forming, the B52's remain one of the strangest and most radical American rock bands to achieve widespread acceptance. There are myriad reasons why a band as weird and wonderful as this managed to sneak its way into the pop mainstream, but one of them is that from the very beginning, the B52's were an undeniably great live act.

Watching the band onstage in clips from the late 1970s and early 1980s is obviously not quite as good as being there in person. But these stolen moments let us catch a fleeting glimpse of the miracle of the B52's.

One of the earliest clips circulating of the band, recorded in a small club right around the time of their "Rock Lobster" debut single, is a murky black-and-white video. But the music is positively technicolor, as the B52's burn through their early repertoire, a rail-thin Fred Schneider and the retro-styled Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson commanding the stage. Behind them, guitarist Ricky Wilson and drummer Keith Strickland provide an endless supply of propulsive riffs and rhythms. The crowd responds in kind with a whirl of perpetual motion. There’s certainly plenty of raw, punkish attitude and energy, but this is, above all, a party band. Specifically, an Athens, Ga. party band.

"The Athens party thing was all about dancing," said the band’s former manager Maureen McGinley in Simon Reynolds’ essential postpunk overview Rip It Up and Start Again. "People didn’t stand around talking and making snide remarks. If an Athens band played and nobody dance, they never played again."

Two years later, the B52's were still in the business of making bodies move, but they had expanded their sonic palette, not to mention their audience. "Rock Lobster" may have screamed "one-hit wonder" at the time, but this was a band bursting with ideas and possibilities. Maybe the best contemporary reference point is the utopian world beat of Talking Heads on their Remain In Light tour (and indeed, the B-52's would work with David Byrne on in the studio in 1981). The B52's’ entire Capitol Theatre performance is well worth your time, every moment a delight. But if you only watch one highlight, make it Cindy Wilson’s tour de force rendition of "Give Me Back My Man". Summoning up a proto-Riot Grrrl intensity at least a decade ahead of its time, Wilson sings as though her life depends on it.

The crowds kept getting bigger as the years went by—though Fred Schneider may be wearing the same plain white tank top he was back in that sweaty Atlanta club. The 1982 US Festival, a kind of precursor to Coachella’s catch-all eclecticism, brought close to 375,000 people to California’s scorching San Bernardino Valley over Labor Day Weekend. You won’t see a trace of stage fright on the faces of the B52's in the surviving clip of their set, a storming "Toss That Beat." Special notice should be given to Ricky Wilson, a guitarist with style to spare. His death at the age of 32 due to AIDS/HIV-related complications in 1985 robbed us of an utterly unique and creative musical force. But he went out with a flourish. That very same year, the B52's played a joyous, day glo set at the massive Rock In Rio festival in front of an audience of more than a million. Unbeknownst to his bandmates, Wilson was already ailing, but the performance is about as life-affirming as it gets.